The primary season is underway. We started a bit late this year, because of redistricting, which didn’t get settled until November. And Primary Election Day is March 1st. So, despite attention rightly turning toward holidays the past few weeks, campaigns are starting to heat up. I’m involved in one particular campaign that I feel strongly about, so I’m writing about that today. Much of this is intended as an article elsewhere, but here I can add details of interest to me, and maybe interest to readers here. So here goes.
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| Redistricting map from FiveThirtyEight |
If you live in this area and don’t know what district you’re now in,
I suggest the interactive tool in the middle of this article. You type in your address, and it gives you your jurisdictions for US Congress
and your Texas House and Senate districts. If you want to know which Harris County
Commissioner Precinct you’re now in, go here and look up your precinct number. All these new districts will be shown on your voter registration card, which
will be sent out to you sometime between now and early voting, so probably
within a month.
Word is that CD 7 (which I was in the first decade of the
century) is mostly being given up to Democrats while CD 2, CD 8, and CD 38 will
lean even more Republican. (For the whole country, you can check out the
redistricting maps and their expected leanings at FiveThirtyEight.)
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CD 7 will be D+24
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CD 2 will be R+30
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CD 8 will be R+26
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CD 38 will be R+27
This means that these races will essentially be decided
during the March 1st Primary Election—or at least settled by any
needed runoff on May 24th.
For the brand new CD 38, this will be an opportunity for
conservatives to get the representation they want and deserve.
There are ten candidates in the race. There’s one big name,
supported by big money and being run from a distance—and the candidate, while
Republican, doesn’t “speak conservative" fluently enough to convince close
watchers that he’s a true “native” conservative. So the grassroots have been
taking a look at the rest of the field.
Republican precinct chairs and other grassroots activists have held two forums, trying to get a feel for who these candidates are. (You can watch the videos of the first one here and the second one here.) At the end of each, they held a straw poll. Both showed Mark Ramsey as the clear winner.
In case you can’t enlarge it enough, every one of the long lines is Mark Ramsey.
Establishment pick Wesley Hunt didn’t show. The first event was
because of a scheduling conflict; that’s forgivable. The second no-show was
simply declining the invitation. At this point, people were starting to grumble
about being snubbed. He was expected at a third event, the Cypress Texas Tea
Party (I’m on the board), on December 18th, and confirmed the night
before. But he sent a representative, with word his daughter woke up with a
fever. He didn’t, however, ask to reschedule for the next meeting. He’s been
doing a few paid-donation dinners and an occasional meet-and-greet, plus some
national media. But nothing that qualifies as reaching out to the grassroots.
As a precinct chair, I’ve gotten phonecalls from his campaign asking for my
endorsement. I say I’m still waiting to hear him in person. Then he doesn’t
show at the events, and they call me again to ask for my endorsement. That does
not show good listening skills.
For comparison, in 2018 I met candidate Dan Crenshaw three
or more times before the primary, and multiple times afterward. He was generous
with his time, and talked one-on-one and in small groups, answering questions—which he did rather well.
He also ran the full length of the district (it was about 70 miles then), and
helped muck out houses and do restoration in a less-affluent area near me following Hurricane Harvey, which happened just about the time he filed to run.
Since becoming something of a media star, a fluke brought about by an SNL attack on him and the military, which he handled with grace and humor, he continues to reach out and do
townhalls. And he does long-form discussions of issues on his podcast. He does
words well; even when we disagree, I can understand his point of view. Wesley Hunt may be a friend to him, and also former military, but he’s not from that mold. He ran for CD 7 in 2020 (not my district, but I preferred two other candidates over him) and lost to the Democrat in the November election.
I gave my endorsement to Mark Ramsey before the second December
forum, by the way. I’m an unpaid campaign volunteer, doing what I do (writing
and editing), and I might even end up block walking with the best of them.
There have been rumors of interference in the race from faraway DC
Republican leadership—what we call the establishment—who think they can choose
our candidate without our say so. One candidate (who has since dropped out of
the race) had hired three campaign advisors—the dream team, they were called,
who had never lost a race when working together. They all quit, because of establishment
pressure telling them they’d never work another congressional campaign if
they did anything to oppose the NRCC Washington establishment anointed one. Other campaigns have found
it nearly impossible to hire help and are struggling along on their own, or are
combining with campaigns in other races to extend their reach and resources.
Meanwhile, Mark Ramsey’s campaign is picking up grassroots support. There's a snapshot of the current grassroots, measuring precinct chair commitment—which was the first step and the key to winning the three Cy-Fair ISD school board races this past November. Two of the three we ousted were long-time establishment Republicans, by the way. The same people who cared enough to block walk to tens of thousands of homes in order to get CRT and anti-family materials out of our schools are a formidable army. Anyway, in that snapshot, of the 70% of responding precinct chairs who have committed to a candidate, 75% have committed to Mark Ramsey.
In a primary election, the most dedicated voters tend to go
to the polls. Precinct chairs can reach those voters in their precincts. Big
money from far away might make sense for a tight general election in which the
candidate needs to appeal to a broad swath of voter persuasions. But in this
particular race, it might come down to who convinces the grassroots that they
hold their values.
It is with good reason that Mark Ramsey is leading the grassroots battle right now. He is a tried-and-true conservative. He has worked in grassroots politics for decades. The state platform looks the way it does—categorized according to state Senate committees—because of his innovations. Many of the planks—the ideas and/or their wording—came from his efforts. The state Legislative Priorities, which he chaired in the last state convention, was an invention coming out of Senate District 7’s platform committee while he was chairing that committee, an idea he then carried to the State Republican Executive Committee. He served as the SREC Committeeman for SD 7 from 2012-2020, the end of his term limit. During that time he chaired multiple state committees, as well as additional local committees. This is all unpaid nitty-gritty volunteer work. A look at his endorsement list shows that his work has been well appreciated by true conservatives—although maybe not by party establishment, who often consider conservatives a thorn in their side.
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| That's me and our editing team—Mark Ramsey was the Platform Committee Chair—taking last-minute edits from delegates at the 2018 RPT Convention. |
Big-money guy Wesley Hunt—and most of the rest of the field—have been MIA from all this citizenship heavy lifting that needs to be done in order to get the government we want. Some of them don’t even vote in the primaries, according to their public record.
I got the graphic above from Ramsey’s website. A friend sent me the one below, one less election cycle, but all the candidates. (David Hogan, by the way, is a precinct chair and has been participating with the grassroots. He calls himself a young Mark Ramsey. I hope he sticks around and runs again for something else in a few years.)
One of the biggest thrills for Ramsey was getting to be a 2020 Presidential Elector. That year he also wrote, defended, and passed a resolution—the first in Electoral College history—condemning the Supreme Court for refusing to take the Texas election integrity case.
Ramsey had a long and distinguished career in oil & gas
engineering, and is honored for his ability to pass along his knowledge and
experience. He authored a peer-reviewed technical book, Practical Wellbore
Hydraulics and Hold Cleaning, © 2019. He received the “Distinguished
Instructor Award” as an Exxon employee, and was named a Charter Member of the
Texas Tech Academy of Mechanical Engineers “for outstanding contributions to
the profession.”
Mark Ramsey and wife Pauline have been married for 40 years
and have three grown children and four grandchildren. His commitment to God is
how he lives and breathes; they worship at WoodsEdge Community Church.
Unlike his Washington establishment opponent, Hunt, who
favors the UN’s global plan on climate change, Ramsey believes in free-market
solutions to climate issues, and in returning the US to that “shining city on a
hill.” Hunt also dismisses CRT in schools as a non-issue; it’s not. Mark Ramsey
helped craft the language in our platform instructing our legislature to get
CRT out of our schools—and we got legislation done on that, HB
3979, requiring that civics teaching must include the moral, political, and
educational foundations of America. Also, in the previous session, taking a
leave from his O&G career, Ramsey served as a legislative staffer where he
authored a bill requiring that high school graduates be able to pass the same
test about America that legal immigrants are required to take.
About 2020 election integrity problems and what to do about
them, he says those who committed election crimes should be prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law. And we should increase penalties to the point the
crimes are no longer worth it. Engineers, he points out, are problem solvers.
He suggests having three independent counting systems: one by Democrats, one by
Republicans, one by someone else; all three have to agree, or they have to
figure out where the discrepancies are. It’s a built-in audit system. He has
been citizen-lobbying the legislature to get better election integrity for
years.
Asked what should be done when he believes SCOTUS makes the
wrong call? From Congress, do everything to nullify or reverse that opinion.
And, he reminds us, Congress can exclude the courts from jurisdiction over
certain areas where they have no business stepping in and inventing law.
All of the grassroots candidates see themselves as running
to make a difference for conservatives, to represent the people. Ramsey is the
one who stands out as the proven person who understands how to solve the
problems our government has caused.
For more information, see RamseyForTexas.com. And consider donating time or money if you’re from around here or interested in the success of our conservative grassroots efforts. One thing I hope we've learned by now is that we can't sit back and let people far away—even people from our own party—make decisions for us.
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